Social Media for Business A Marketer’s Guide

 Should your business be on social media? Absolutely. But should you have an account on every platform? Not necessarily. Your social success depends largely on the type of business you run and how much time and effort you intend to put into your strategy. Some networks, like Facebook, are more low-maintenance and work for every type of business, while others, like Instagram, require more dedication, working best for businesses in certain niches. Want to create an enviable social strategy? Familiarize yourself with all of the social networks at your disposal, figure out which features will work best with social media marketing firms your business and focus on the platforms that best reflect your business's mission. Business pages are most successful when they are used as a community hub for information, rather than as a soapbox to promote your business. Three well-spaced posts throughout the day are more than sufficient to give online presence. No one wants a newsfeed that is clogged with business ads and promotions. Use a 1:2 ratio when posting status updates. This means post one status update about your business for every two updates you post that are of other subject matter. Letting followers know about upcoming community events, contests, “fun facts,” or polls are great for bringing online traffic to your page. Don’t forget to utilize photos every now and again so that your page is not visually bogged down and text heavy. Nothing is more satisfying to a page follower than to receive recognition by the business whose page they are following. When fans leave comments or questions on a status update, thank them (tag them!) and then answer the question or comment back. Show some love to fans that post positive reviews and photos or videos of your business by clicking the “like” button. When addressing a person who has posted a complaint or a negative review, handle your business’ response quickly and professionally. Thank social media marketing books them for taking the time to contact you, apologize, and redirect them to a private message with your business to discuss the complaint further. Positive handling of these situations when posted publicly on your page show other followers that you are prompt, courteous and more than willing to address the situation. As an added bonus to doing your own social media marketing, Facebook allows businesses to geo-target their statuses by selecting gender, age, location, and interests when “promoting” posts. Statistics are also provided under the “Insights” tab, which delivers helpful graphs tracking page activity. No matter which way you look at it, social media marketing allows businesses to generate traffic, customers, and referrals in a cost effective manner. Making sure that you are handling your business page in the most efficient ways will guarantee a win-win marketing scenario.

Develop a Smart Social Media Strategy for Business School Applications

When applying to business school, your MBA essays and interviews are the primary way to market yourself and generate positive attention from the admissions committee. But the way you present your personal brand on social media should also be a part of the equation. Your social profile needs to match the persona you will present to the admissions team, so start thinking of it as an opportunity to better tell the story of you. Every applicant social media in marketing should have a baseline social presence to reinforce and enhance their candidacy. Some admissions committee members proactively search for information about applicants online, so you'll want to link to your social profiles within the application to make it easy for them to have another touch point by which to assess you. Sievers states that “The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.” It isn’t enough to lead others in adopting collaboration technology: a new passion-inspiring social toy shows up every week. We must build communities and leverage social tools based on what drives genuine business value. For example, you might think that an embedded discussion forum is just the thing to create a virtual community. But is that really what everyone wants or needs? Would a simple file sharing system that eliminates fat emails and makes documents readily accesible work better? The mark of a courageous follower is a willingness to dump his or her own vision for an approach that makes everyone’s lives easier. They see past their own passion and base their actions on what others want. They choose experimentation over force-it-down-the-throat implementation. They seek to use what engineers call “the minimum viable product,” offering the simplest, most basic system, testing that, small business social media marketing and either enhancing it later or dumping it for a better one, and then building from there. Get over yourself and your role. Sievers emphasizes the “importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.” In the same way, encouraging colleagues to embrace social tools requires us to focus on the what we are trying to accomplish, rather than fixate on a specific tool (or on the promotion we’ll get for doing this right.) Our experience and that of others proves that adopting social technology within a company is about inciting a movement that colleagues can own and leadership can support. Because we are trying to enhance the way people communicate, collaborate, develop products, and remain nimble in the face of growth and change, we have to start inciting passion, not falling in love with technology.

Grow the bottom line using social media

“Since working with Albatross we have been able to attract a new online audience that previously we were struggling to reach out to” says Sam Poole, manager at Sale Golf Club. “Running online activities was far too time consuming for me so it’s great to set a plan with Albatross at the beginning of each month and have full confidence that they can deliver the results. “In the couple of months that we have been working with Albatross social media marketing campaign our social media numbers have gone up considerably, we have built a database of around 1,000 local golfers, found 15 new members and are now turning this audience into green fee payers and society bookings. I would have no hesitation in recommending Albatross to my peers.” In September 2015, golf digital marketing agency Albatross Digital Golf started working with Sale Golf Club to help them find new customers and raise awareness online about one of Manchester’s finest courses. We were handed the keys to Sale GC’s social media accounts and email database and immediately took management of all posting across Facebook and Twitter. Our first task was to grow the Followers and Likes on the accounts to gain ‘social proof’ and get golfers engaging with the social media pages whilst highlighting some exclusive online offers. But social media isn’t just about Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers. For a golf course like Sale, it is about building a relationship with a local audience, creating and posting content, generating an experience that people want to talk about and share with their fellow golfers and creating a community that golfers will constantly engage with. In October we were tasked with a membership drive to find local golfers looking to join a new club. We created a competition that ran throughout the month to Win A Pair Of Winter Memberships social media marketing campaigns to Sale Golf Club. Our graphic designer at Albatross designed all the competition artwork using beautiful high-res images of the golf course and the competition was run across Facebook, Twitter and to the existing email database.